Oct. 5, 2013

FTC lawyer speaks at Greenberg Traurig

Greenberg Traurig LLP's East Palo Alto office hosted a presentation Thursday on privacy law by Federal Trade Commission attorney Laura Berger. Berger, a senior attorney in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, walked the audience through a series of FTC privacy cases and gave advice for compliance. Greenberg Traurig partner Ian Ballon, an intellectual property and Internet litigator, said registration for the event filled up faster than any he had ever hosted, demonstrating that, like the general public, attorneys are enraptured by recent privacy law developments. Berger explained that the bar for keeping a promise to users to not share their information with advertisers is very high, something that was at issue in cases brought by the agency against Facebook Inc. and Myspace LLC. She said it isn't enough for a company to separate data from personal identifying information; it also has to ensure the data can't be relinked to the original user after the fact. "They could use that information to look up the public information in your portfolio and sync it up with their targeting info," she said. Berger said designing apps for kids was also tripping some companies up, as they want their interfaces to be simple and visually appealing for children. "We found that a significant amount of kids' apps don't have any privacy statement, which is a pretty bad state of affairs, particularly in California, where every app has to have [one]," she said. Berger said basic oversights like these are still common. "We're going after the low-hanging fruit, and there just continues to be low-hanging fruit." — Joshua Sebold